Thursday, September 27, 2007

Check out the necklace that's going up for auction this December at Christie's in London. The pearls set into it once belonged to Marie Antoinette. It consists of natural pearls, diamonds and rubies.

Isn't that gorgeous?! Look at the size of those pearls. They look massive. I think it's absolutely beautiful. (Boy, Christie's sure knows how to photograph jewelry, huh?)

I hope it goes to a museum so that the world can enjoy seeing this masterpiece as they can the Hope Diamond and other magnificent treasures of the world.

***CORRECTION: I had originally stated that this necklace once belonged to Marie Antionette. My mistake. Only the pearls once belonged to her. Thank you for correcting me. I don't like to state wrong information.***

UPDATE: This gorgeous necklace failed to sell at auction due to not fetching enough to meet the reserve price. I still believe it would be wonderful if it were put in a museum for all to enjoy.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

First of all let me apologize to everyone. I have been so busy lately and so tired. Kevin has been sick for over a week now with a stuffy nose, cough, fever, and just plain feeling yucky. He missed two days of school this week, poor thing. I had a bit of a sinus headache myself. I've also been trying to get things made for my Etsy shop so I don't get out of the habit of making things and being creative. That is really important to me. I've pretty much let the house go at this point. And, well, I just haven't felt like being my bloggy self at all. I miss all of you terribly, visiting your blogs and having you visit mine. But I just had to take a moment to blog about this.

I was thrilled recently to have sold a pair of pearl earrings to a fellow Carolinian (South), my first sale to the Carolinas other than family. A very friendly customer and fun too. So when my customer emailed me saying she was blogging about her purchase I was twice thrilled! Here is her entry about her experience shopping with MsBelle on Etsy.

To my customer, I really appreciate your kindness and am very flattered. I'm very grateful. Customers like you don't come along every day and it means a lot when you do. So my thanks to you for being such a wonderful customer. You made my otherwise lousy week not so lousy!

Friday, September 14, 2007

Kevin and I journeyed back to the mountains last weekend for the funeral of my uncle who passed away. The resulting sadness and depression were really about to get me down. I tend to think about things too much sometimes (a lot) and it eats away at me inside until I get all stressed out. I think about life, death, people I know, my family, the universe...and how short this life really is. I get all jumbled inside my head and want to stop thinking. My uncle will be missed. He was a character. Even in death he still had his sense of humor. Even so, it was too early for him to go and it made an impact on me and I started getting depressed. But...

...I must say this has been a pretty good week in spite of things.

First of all, Kevin only got in trouble for talking in class once this week as opposed to four times last week! (He's a talker, that boy.) They get 'cards' that start out green. When they get in trouble the first time they "turn their card to yellow" (I'm not sure what they do but they go through colors each time they break the rules). The second time it gets turned to red and they get a 5 minute time out and the parent gets a call. Then finally it goes to blue. Kevin didn't get to play at recess twice as a result of his talking. He also tole me he had to "walk around in a square instead of play" one day and then "sit on the carpet". (This all sounded sort of mean to me but since I'm not there, I'm not sure what they're doing. ) Then finally when their card gets turned blue they go to the principal's office and the parent gets another call and the child gets a 30 minute time out in another room. The first week of kindergarten and Kevin got his turned blue! But he didn't have to go to the principal's office. I did get called twice however. I promptly told my little talker that he needed to stay quiet and not disrupt the class or talk when he was not supposed to. The teacher told me he was not alone in this card-turning. I felt a little better. So, this week he only got his card turned once--today! But I congratulated him on making it for four days!

Secondly, I bought a showcase spot for today, Friday, and I thought it went really well.

So I buried myself in trying to come up with some new things and kept myself busy making and photographing them to prepare for the showcase. I wanted to have some cool new stuff to 'showcase'. (I like to get at least one spot if for no other reason than it makes me work harder to create new things. It gets my butt in gear.) I stayed up late and worked during the day while Kevin was in school (at last). It felt good. I think I got some pretty good things made too. Not a lot, but I was happy with what I did get made. And for the first time since I have been buying showcase spots, I actually made two sales directly from it! (Yay!) That's a first! Those two most recent sales and a custom order yesterday put me at 75 sales total! I have one remaining custom order that will put me at 76 and I'm just thrilled about that, can't you tell?! I never thought I'd see the day that I might approach 100. Now I'm hoping I can make that goal by my one year anniversary in November. But I don't want to jinx myself so I'd better hush up right now before the sky falls in.

Thirdly, as mentioned above, I recently got two custom orders from Etsy that were non-family!! One is going to the UK and the other has gone on its way to Texas. Also, I shipped another package to the UK in August but my customer told me she had not received it. :( After consulting with Kathy of Dornick Designs, I told her to wait a little while longer to see if it showed up. Otherwise, I was going to make her a new piece if it did not arrive. Luckily, it made it!! Whew!! But it took almost 4 weeks to get to its destination. As Kathy so graciously advised me, sometimes customs can hold up packages overseas. Indeed, this was the case. But it finally arrived and the customer was happy with her new jewelry. Thank you customs.... ;P

Fourth, our dear friend Stephanie put together a 'love'-ly treasury and kindly included me in it. It's always nice to be featured in a treasury. There's always that chance you're going to be on the front page (and they're just so fun).

Fifth, a necklace of mine was featured on WickedlyChic.com in their Daily Ditties section! Talk about surprised! I was thrilled. I don't know how many people actually saw it but I was emailed yesterday that it appeared there on September 13th. After this week it will be archived, so at least I got to see it while it was there. It made me happy! This is the screenshot of it:

Sixth, I bought an ad on the Etsytools.com site for next week. Look for me there!

Seventh, I hit 600 hearts today!

And finally....it rained today. For the first time since Kevin and I have come back from the mountains in August it rained. It hasn't been a lot of rain, but it's rain nonetheless. It has been in the 90s here each day and it's just miserable. No rain at all. Sometimes we'd get clouds, lightning and thunder, but not a drop of rain here at my house. Everything is brown and the grass crunches under your feet. No flowers in my yard and I'm afraid it's going to stay that way. I'm not using our precious water just to keep my dead flowers alive that will come back next year if I'm lucky. If they don't, no big loss. The water is by far more precious. We have to pay for our water. City water. So I try not to use any more than I have to. Besides that, it just makes sense. We're in a severe drought. Save the water. The plants can die. So today, it rained!

And the temperature finally lowered itself into the mid 80s. What a relief. The A/C in my Jeep doesn't work so well in the high 90s. When I get in it to go pick Kevin up from school it's sweltering inside and too hot to touch the steering wheel. I have a black interior which doesn't help. But now fall is on its way and the cooler weather with it. I'm so looking forward to that. So is Kevin. Let it rain all it wants to, and then some.

Oh, and I almost forgot, a picture I took last year of a sweetgum seed pod sitting atop my boulder in the back yard is going to appear in a Charlotte magazine called "BanktownU$A" and it will be hitting the streets next week! Apparently it's just a tiny little picture, probably the size of an avatar or something, but it will have a link to my Flickr photos! How cool is that?!

That's it gang. It's been a while since I wrote. I do apologize. I've been depressed and keeping myself busy trying to get ready for the showcase. I'll try to get back into the swing of things here shortly. (And Shannon, I have not forgotten you tagged me so I'll get to that as well. I have a long middle name and I'm still working on it!)

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

This morning I was cruising around in the Etsy forums, reading this and that, finding pertinent threads that I might add my two cents worth to, etc., and make an appearance. Then I came upon this uplifting, hilarious thread, posted by BSBCreations. I thought I might share it with you. For those who don't want to follow the link to the forums I'll just copy and paste her post here:

"I got this from a wonderful friend and had to share! Have a nice day!

Q: How many forum members does it take to change a lightbulb?

1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed

14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently

7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs

1 to move it to the Lighting section

2 to argue then move it to the Electricals section

7 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs

5 to flame the spell checkers

3 to correct spelling/grammar flames

6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb"

6 to flame them

2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is "lamp"

15 know-it-alls who claim they were in the industry, and that "light bulb" is perfectly correct

19 to post that this forum is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb forum

11 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this forum

36 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty

7 to post URL's where one can see examples of different light bulbs

4 to post that the URL's were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URL's

3 to post about links they found from the URL's that are relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group

13 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers and signatures, and add "Me too"

5 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy

4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"

13 to say "do a Google search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs"

1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start it all over again."